CYD, founded in 2002, gained notoriety for publishing highly critical articles about furry activities and personalities. Few new articles were posted after 2006, but its forums remained moderately active. In October 2007, several regulars left to form Vivisector.

Comments

Ah, wondered what happened with CYD, guess even their own people got tired of trying to look for stuff to dig about. Aw well, there's always the fresh off the anger train guys to pick up the slack... so what group is going to form off of ViviSector in 2015 which will eventually purchase them in 2018?

We'll call it the rage cycle.

Nah, critic is always a interesting thing to me. Their current website looks just as inactive though... I mean 1 post in the past 3 months about the chewfox thing and only the last sentence looks like it was actually written for the post... the rest looks like it was written back in October when the incident occurred.

I don't know. The "underside" of furry fandom is on display on FurAffinity and Yiff--uh, SoFurry pretty openly (some might say brazenly). My problem with sites like Vivisector and CYD isn't that I have a hear-no-evil "can't we all just hold hands and sing happy songs" view of the fandom (which I think a few vocal fans sometimes topple into). It's that furry fandom has an abundance of mockery from within and without already. It's not as if there's a dire need for another place providing more of it.

What we need are critiques from people who would like to see the fandom get better at certain things it's not so good at. (My list would include educating new fans about the history of furry fandom, doing better at breaking out of the "my artistic influences are furry artists who were popular five years ago!" insularity, promoting writing in general, and--yes--public relations, although I think on the whole the fandom is better at the latter than it collectively gives itself credit for.) Vivisector and friends, even when their writing is amusing (and sometimes it surely is), very rarely gets past "here is something worth mocking--let us all point and laugh heartily." They're superlative at providing cheap humor at the expense of others. But over the long run I don't think that's particularly interesting, and it's certainly not constructive.

One of 2's journals once said that a friend told him that humor was based upon "injustice". When you can't change something, or seems like you're powerless to do something about it you make jokes about it. The more people dislike the event/person the more that joke will propegate.

It's why alot of comedians that were around in the Bush days aren't as central on the floor anymore. Bush was an easy target, now that he's gone, they have to make new jokes since the President isn't feeding them material everyday.

So as the furry fandom gets better there will certainly be less material for places like this to use, and maybe the original owner was kinda finding it harder to find new things to mock, or he no longer felt he needed to because it didn't effect him all that much anymore (as he might have shed off his furriness).

This will probably also happen with Vivisector as well, eventually, but I'm sure something else will take its place.

The thing that gets me is that Vivisector rarely gets past "here is someone worth mocking." Even when they talk about groups or sites, the focus is on individuals. Certainly, sometimes individuals are involved, but if they wanted to change things, it might be worth concentrating on the process, rather than the people.

At the end of the day, mocking people isn't really all that impressive. There are better targets for critique.

(Of course, a more effective tactic is to "be the change you wish to see" – do whatever it is yourself, only better.)

Well, there are some issues that run into a collectively cognitive dissonance over social mores (i.e., the matters of zoophilia and of cub art), and those aren't going to get any better through process. As for others, there will always be a dearth of "fuck-awful" art: they refuse to acknowledge that Sturgeon's Law/Revelation applies just as much to furry art as it does to everything else, so they'll be forever mocking in that area as well. However, their complaints about malicious, inconsistent, or otherwise bad administrative practices by certain furry organizations can be addressed through encouraging the improvement of process, even if it is easier to go after people in that case.

But mostly, I think that they like complaining. I mean, in some sense, everybody needs to vent frustrations, but if they were interested in fixing perceived problems, they would be pursuing actual dialog. Whither diplomacy? (I wonder, though: Is there any room for mediators in the fandom?)

It not I agree with the mocking but Vivisector looks beyond "hear-no-evil "can't we all just hold hands and sing happy songs" it it a good site to find the initial report but then fin corroborating reports on more journalistic respectable sites. I would not use them as a source for my news but a place to get a good lead and do diligent research elsewhere.
ps I ma actonrf I was not logged in.

Mitch was/is an "Internet" friend; I started posting to CYD regularly simply because he more or less encouraged me too. He basically confided in me a long time ago that, if he didn't mind the direction his site had went, he had hoped that discussions about the art, and how to better use it, would occur. In other words, if not all the regulars, the founder was a furry who was, I believe, deeply disappointed in the social direction the fandom has taken; he always had a sense of humor about it, though. Crush!Yiff!Destroy!, as I believe it was intended, was, first and foremost, a humor site; most of it bitterly unfunny, but at least they tried.

I feel that this is completely lacking in Vivisector; it's a much angrier site. I guess that's what kept CYD around so long; Mitch might not have been particularly angry, but a lot of the site members sure were. I'll probably avoid Vivisector; too much spewing of emotions. Not that there's anything wrong with that, particularly, it's just that the members or Vivisector would probably object to the term "humor site." I don't know, there's no art in their bile. It's just bitter, bitter bile. That, and they have way too many vaguely defined subforums; trying to figure it all out gives me a headache.

Also, "yiff" is dead, long live "yiff." I suppose ychan is the last furry site to even vaguely use it, now that Crush!Yiff!Destroy!'s dead and YiffStar's SoFurry. I am definitely in a minority when I say I'll miss it, but it was a funny, cute little word for something that doesn't really deserve much better, you know?